CHAMPs > CHAMP in Action

Fighting Parkinson

January 24, 2013 - Once upon a time there was an ambitious young gal highlighted in the local paper featuring her start up ecofriendly T -shirt business (Justine) and a college business instructor that noticed that article (Mary). After a guest appearance in the professor’s class, a friendship started that would ignite many ideas!

Through the past few years, Justine has developed her business and found a calling to help support Parkinson’s. This came about through her personal experience with her grandmother’s Parkinson’s. Mary’s had her own experience with her mother’s battle with Parkinson’s and is now fighting her own personal battle with the disease. Together, we hope to help further the journey to fight Parkinson’s and possibly a cure.

The first event we did together was The Parkinson Alliance’s Carnegie Center 5K in Princeton, NJ, where we met Helaine Isaacs, Event Director for the Parkinson’s Unity Walk. That started the wheels turning on how we could get involved!

Justine developed a fundraising program using my ecofriendly T- shirts; this model is called “One T @ a Time.” The unique feature in this model is that no waste is created. Marketing is done electronically, eliminating paper waste, T- shirts are made to order with a print on demand practice and the material itself is 100% ecofriendly and 100% of the net profits are donated to the Parkinson’s Unity Walk. The marketing focus for Team One T @ a Time will be sending e-mails to contacts, securing sponsors, posting on greenchanges.org site, Facebook and exposure on the Parkinson’s Unity Walk site.

This model of fundraising demonstrates that supporting a cause can be accomplished by networking, harvesting your natural resources, and operating with passion. We hope to grow in knowledge, support and inspiration on our journey to help.

Hey, maybe next we can organize a local 5K and expand the efforts to raise funds for research in PA!